T. Belman. Ben Hecht, a very successful Hollywood script writer in the first half of the nineteenth century wrote the riviting book Perfida in which he covered the trial of Rudolf Kastner by Israel in the early fifties.
In the forties, Hecht was very active together with Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) in the campaign to save the Jews of Europe. Their story was covered in another riviting book titled “A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust” by David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff.
By Elie Weisel, Yediot Achronot,
September 4, 1959
[…] At this point our extremely lengthy discussion essentially came to a close. At the end of this conversation I became very tired. Whenever I go back to those days and nights, I feel that part of myself remained there. I arose and extended my hand – and then I suddenly remembered a question:“Did you hear the name Rudolf Kasztner? ”I was sure that he would answer negatively and was already prepared to explain to him everything behind this name, when to my total surprise he replied:“I did.”“When?” I asked. “Now – post-war?”“Yes, also post-war. I heard he had problems in Israel.”He doesn’t know – I thought – that Kasztner is dead.
“You said you also heard of him post-war. Should I conclude that you heard his name during the war?”“Yes, I heard his name then as well.”“From whom?” My curiosity kept growing.“From General Walter Schellenberg and General Rudolf Brandt. The first was head of Himmler’s SD counter-intelligence and the second was the Reichsfuhrer’s secretary and adjutant.”“What did they say about him?”“Schellenberg said to me that Kasztner was one of his agents and that he did a good job in Budapest. He also told me that Kasztner asked him to release a few hundred Jews from the camp because he wanted to prepare an alibi for himself. In the espionage services it’s common practice to provide assistance to agents, because often one might require their services after the deluge.”“Are you sure that Schellenberg told you about Dr. Kasztner? Rudolf Kasztner?”“Yes, I’m absolutely sure.”“And what did Rudolf Brandt tell you?”“Once he told me, laughing, that in Budapest there’s a Jewish agent in the service of Nazi intelligence who has a name like mine: Kasztner – Kersten.”“Did Himmler ever mention Kasztner?”“I can’t remember. I assume that he didn’t. But when I complained about the brutal Nazi methods used against Jews, he told me that he had Jews working for him, for money, in Switzerland and other countries.”I told him that Kasztner was murdered in Tel Aviv.“Really?” Kersten opened his eyes.Answer: “Really.”[…]
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
You always find such interesting and generally overlooked, pertinent information. You must have secret sources or a huge library.
@ Edgar G.:
Interesting referral, you make about Meinertzhagen. He too greatly helped the Jewish State.
Another great friend of the Jewish people in those times was Major Tony Symonds, Head of the Military Intelligence Department (MI9) during the Rommel invasion of North Africa. Symonds was a lifelong friend of Orde Wingate, another staunch supporter of the young Jewish Yishuv.
As noted above, these individuals made great personal contributions to the foundation of Israel – on their very own initiative and transgressing what was expected of them.
Subsequently, many, as Lishansky, Wingate, Aharonson, Kasztner, Storfer came to meet untimely death.
Symonds and Meinertzhagen thankfully, passed away of natural cause. Something to celebrate…
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Apropos Aharon Aaronsohn, Meinertzhagen wrote that he was the finest person he’d ever met, and their long discussions caused him to turn from the pervasive British Jew-contempt attitude to Jews, to being a fervent very aggressive, permanent Zionist. Chaim Weitzman writes about it also….
@ Michael S:
I marched with the IRA, too. I was an independent Communist who worked with all the parties. I came from an assimilated, secular immediate family and being Jewish was not relevant to me at that time. I thought of myself as a citizen of the world.
Thank you for sharing that. My mother’s family were Lithuanian Jews who emigrated in the 19th century to America. My father was a Hungarian Jew who escaped from a forced labor camp in Czechoslavakia, made his way to Budapest under siege and working with the Zionist Youth Movement and the Glass House, I presume, rescued Jews by posing as a Nazi.
After the war, he was accused of being a real Nazi, based solely on his own testimony, and imprisoned and tortured. After some of the many Jews he saved, came from all over the country to testify for him, he was acquitted. He hid in a coffin, in a hearse to a relatively unguarded part of the border and walked through an uncharted minefield, and then played tag with border police in Austria.
Then he worked manual labor jobs to get to Spain and came here on a refugee ship. America wasn’t taking refugees but he had two uncles who were citizens.
He lost everyone in his extended family in Hungary, both sets of parents and grandparents and all of his favorite uncles and aunts, cousins. His first cousin survived Auschwitz and they came over together with her new husband, who had escaped from a forced labor camp in the Ukraine, made his way to Budapest and worked as Raoul Wallenberg’s switchboard operator. On a couple of occasions, he also personally rescued Jews.
Yes, while Hungary enacted the first antisemitic laws in Europe in the 1920, the Shoah didn’t come to Hungary until 1944, though Hungarian troops participated in it in The Soviet Union and were rumored to be even more brutal than the Germans. Can’t really say that Hungary didn’t deserve the treatment it got from them.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Hi, Sebastien.
Humans seem like very irrational beings, and nothing seems to bear this out better than the Shoah and the events pertaining to it, before and after.
I frankly can’t relate to your having been a Palestinian sympathizer in the 1980s. I’m not accusing or excusing you of anything, just saying that I cannot personally relate to it. In the early 1970s, I associated with some Jewish and Irish-American activists, all of them anti-War activists, in order for them to help me get out of the US Army. The Jews were in some do-gooder head space that I couldn’t relate to; but the Irish were more understandable: both of them were sons of Communist Party USA members who had done prison time in the McCarthy days. There was nothing “do-good”, in their minds, that could not be easily taken care of with a good Easter-Uprising-type revolution.
Irish. Go figure, Edgar G.
Somewhere along the way, I was exposed to Provisional IRA propaganda in which the Irish spokesman said the Provos were in solidarity with the Palestinian “freedom fighters”. I was never able to swallow their solidarity, any more than I fell for their atheism.
A curious fact about the Shoah: My mother’s family is descended from Polish-Ukrainian Jews who emigrated to Slovenia and became Christian. This happened long ago, probably in the early 1800s, so there is no record of it on the Slovenian side, save the knowledge on everyone’s part there, that theirs was the only family with its peculiar last name. Over the years, I have contacted cousins on the Jewish side of the family, and compared experiences with them. Curiously, the Jews and Christians met the same fate in every family: Those who emigrated to America in the early 1900s were spared any sort of trouble; but those left behind in Europe were sent to forced labor and executed at Auschwitz, both Jew and Christian.
That’s a curiosity that causes me to take some of the more venomous comments on Israpundit and elsewhere with a grain of salt. As I said, people in general are irrational, and I don’t waste much time trying to figure them out.
What IS interesting to me, is that my Chinese Christian children and grandchildren are in a place similar to the pre-War Jews in Germany: Christians are already being discriminated against and persecuted, and a war between China and the US is looming over the horizon; but right now, my family is secure and accepted there, and making a living. What’s more, America itself seems poised for a Bolshevik-type revolution, and I don’t have a deep assurance that life here would necessarily be better than it will be in China. We might find ourselves like the Jews of ancient Israel: Many of them fled to Egypt, to escape the Babylonians, only to see the latter conquer Egypt just a few years later. The upshot is that hindsight is 20/20; but in the early 1940s, the situation was not black and white for the Jews of Hungary.
@ Edgar G.:
Let’s just say that individual initiatives were not encouraged…
Dr. Baruch Konfino from Bulgaria privately organized ships that evacuated thousands of Jews from Bulgaria. This in addition to support he rendered to others such as Isaiah Trachtenberg or Berthold Storfer and many more. Still, Konfino was accused of enrichening himself. At least they did not liquidate Dr. Konfino.
Others were less fortunate. Take Joseph Lishansky as an example. He was hounded by the Yishuv, shot, mistakenly left for dead and turned over to the Turks. He survived and even in prison, Meir Dizengoff made sure Lishansky will be especially treated with cruelty by the Turks, who themselves were not known for humanity. Lishansky was hung in Damascus in 1917.
Together with Aaron Aaronsohn, Lishansky provided invaluable intelligence to the British that materially changed the course of the First World War, crushing the Turkish lock up on the Eastern Front and shortening the war by 1 – 2 years.
Crucially, following the unexpected breach of the front in Palestine, the British ceased their on-and-off courtship advances towards the Turkish Empire, paving the way for the Balfour Declaration and first steps establishing a Jewish homeland in Israel. All this caused by private initiative that was a real game changer.
Guess what, Aaronsohn was killed in an airplane crash under unclear circumstances…
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Talking about Wise and Hillel Silver reminds me…wasn’t Arthur Hertzberg involved there somewhere too….
Luminaries in the US as Stephen Wise were reluctant to muddy their fine relations with the American political leadership, and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver thought it strategically imprudent to aggravate the British, and Zionist leaders in Palestine understandably, where preoccupied with an Arab uprising and a possible occupation of the Mid-East by Nazi inspired forces, such as the Iraq.
So it was left to mavericks as Kasztner to take up the initiative. They did not reap gratitude.
Kommerzialrat Berthold Storfer of the Hilfskomitee zur Förderung der jüdischen Auswanderung in Vienna managed to help close to 10‘000 Jews to escape. Up until 1941 Storfer and the „Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Wien“ were able to operate, curiously, with the support of Adolf Eichmann, and prodded by the Reichsstatthalter Arthur Seyß-Inquart, the Nazio Governor of Austria. The Nazis at that time were still interested to expel Jews.
Zionist activists avoided Storfer and later ignored pleas to rescue him when he went into hiding. Storfer eventually was arrested and perished in Auschwitz. At first, Storfer was accused of cooperating with the Nazis. Later, this was retracted.
Let no good deed go unpunished
I think that the matter of Kirsten’s credibility should remain open. While it is true that a Dutch historian accused him of telling lies and forging documents, a recent article published in Haaraetz in January of this year claims that Kirsten did indeed help to save some Jewish lives towards the end of World War II by acting as an intermediary between Heinrich Himmler, the Red Cross, the Swedish government, and the World Jewish Congress, all of whom were at this time attempting to save the lives of those Jews who were still surviving in the remaining unliberated Nazi concentration camps-especially Ravensbrook. Similar cl aims about Kirsten’s activities are to be found in the Wikiperdia article about him. The Jewish agency officially thanked Kirsten for his efforts in December 1945.According to Wikipedia, Kirsten’s role in helping the Red Cross to save some Danish Jews who were being held prisoner in a Nazi camp is documented in the Swedish government’s archives. It is also not in dispute that Kirsten worked for Heinrich Himmler as his personal masseur during World War II, while the Holocaust was under way. It is thus possible that he was privy to some Nazi secrets. We thus cannot be certain that what he told Weisel about Kastner was false.
Some circumstantial evidence does suggest that Kastner was a Nazi collaborator. One piece of evidence is that he acted as a witness for the defense at the Nuemberg trials for a Nazi war criminal. He falsely denied that he had done this during his libel suit against the Israeli journalist who accused him of being a collaborator. Later, he admitted that he had perjered himself about this matter, which undermined his credibility . Kastner claimed that he persuaded Hannah Sennesh, the Jewish woman whom the Haganah managed to smuggle into Budabest in an effort to save Jewish lives,to give herself up to the Gestapo, which tortured and killed her. Sine it is not credible that a Jewish agency undercover agent would at this time voluntarily hand herself in to the Gestapo, it is more likely that Kastler informed on her–which would indeed make him a Nazi spy.
Kastner admitted during the trials in Israel concerning the accusations against him that he had not attempted to warn his fellow Jews who were living in Hungary at the time (1943-44) that the trains that Eichmann’s men were herding them into were taking them to extermination centers. It is true that had he done so, and Eichman had realized that he was doing this, he would have been put to death. But there were other Jewish leaders in Eastern Europe at this time who nevertheless took that risk. He also could have attempted to organize some kind of uprising in Budapest a la the Warsaw Ghetto–but he didn’t.
Last but not least, we need to bear in mind that Eichmann spared Kastner’s life–and he spared the lives of very, very, few Jews. This, to me, suggests that he (Eichmann) thought he owed Kastner something.
Sebastien Zorn Said:
Thanks for reminding me of this book. I read it soon after it was published but evidently forgot about it and what it contained.
This was a terrific book I found an eye opener. https://www.amazon.com/Kasztners-Train-True-Story-Holocaust/dp/0802717411
Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust Paperback – March 3, 2009
by Anna Porter (Author)
“In March, 1944, the German army marched into Hungary, followed soon after by Adolf Eichmann and his SS Sondercommando. His single goal was to eliminate the entire Jewish population of the country. Rezso Kasztner-a lawyer and Zionist activist-stood in his way. In meeting after meeting with Eichman and other Nazis, he sought common ground, exploiting their twin weaknesses of greed and fear, in the process saving thousands of lives. Kasztner’s Train-a reference to the famous train ride to freedom he organized-tells this dramatic story for the first time, including a shocking postscript. After the war, Kasztner emigrated to Israel, where in 1956 he was stunningly convicted of collaborating with the Nazis more than a decade before. As he awaited the appeal that would ultimately exonerate him, he was murdered by right-wing activists in Tel Aviv on March 4, 1957.
Hungarian by birth, Anna Porter lived through the Hungarian Revolution as a child, and brings to this book a determination and passion to tell the full story of one of the heroes of the 20th century. Kasztner’s Train is based on interviews with survivors who were on the train, and with family members of other survivors, as well as with descendants of those murdered in concentration camps.”
Needs to be a movie.
In fact, an elderly European antisemite once came up to me randomly in a coffee shop and began telling me about Kasztner’s conviction as though (a) it hadn’t been overturned on appeal and (b) it somehow cast aspersion on all Jews for being, seriously, Nazi collaborators. We see how this blood libel began.
Antisemites used to come up to me and start conversations on the street all the time. Black and white.
@ Edgar G.:
Yes. I agree with you and Hugo. And, it’s important and should be brought out because as a 2nd Generation Hungarian Jewish Shoah survivor on my father’s side, my anger at Kasztner and my association of him with Zionism and — my deliberately cultivated by the Marxist Pals in the 80s — fictitious association between him, the Zionist movement and collaboration — provided a personal justification for me to side with the Pals in the 80s.
When I mentioned my background, pal activists naturally assumed that this was where I was coming from. When I have spoken to pro-pal Jewish and non-Jewish American leftists now, it’s like experiencing a time warp. Everything they believe is propaganda that dates back to that time.
I saw “Project Finale” which debunks for a popular audience Hannah Arendt’s nonsense about Eichmann just being a bureaucratic apparatchik. There needs to be movies rehabilitating Kasztner. He was a hero who saved many Jewish lives.
And, also the Zionist youth movement based in the Glass House, which my father took part in — though I didn’t know about the movement part until much later — which infiltrated the Arrow Cross and posing as Hungarian Nazis, distributed false ids, food, clothing and brought doctors and medicine to Jews hiding in basements with badly faked ids, and moved them around and led identification checks to make sure that the real Nazis didn’t discover them.
They also moved Jews out of the ghetto to safety at the end. But, I didn’t know about this and these KGB trainees played on that. In fact, the main leader of the Pal solidarity group I worked with had studied in Moscow.
We have to bring this out in popular media. It’s also the origin of the blood libel about the collaboration of the Zionist movement with the Nazis. Abbas did his dissertation on this. Also, in Moscow.
I thought Kastner was convicted but the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction.
I read Perfida and believed he was guilty. So I am surprised that you both think otherwise.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
I’ve always agreed with your opinion. Kastner was NO traitor, he was despicably murdered. Kastner was overwhelmed but still carried on as best he could. It’s not as if he was a specially outstanding case-except in his attempts to save Jews- Jews all over the continent did not listen to warnings, WOULD NOT listen. He could not be compared in ANY way, for instance, to such drek as Soros, today alive and kicking and still doing Israel the greatest damage possible.
Felix Kersten was a liar. Reputable historians have concluded that Felix Kersten produced forgeries and provided false testimonies.
Whether Kersten in particular, also made up the allegations about Kasztner, is hard to tell. In any event, Kasztner’s court proceedings which were rather rigorous, never came up with an allegation he was a spy.
And even if Kasztner was a spy. It is very doubtful he had anything to offer the Germans. What harm has he done? – None. But he was able to do a lot of good.
For years leading up to the Hungarian, Slovak and Czech Holocaust, Kasztner tried moving heaven and earth within the Jewish and Zionist establishment. To no avail. He went from door to door, they would not listen or prepare and Kasztner was ostracized.
Finally, the Germans arrived, it was too late. So Kasztner went and tried to make a deal with the Nazis. And he succeeded. Under pretexts and flimsy promises, he traded off a couple of thousand people that eventually, after hardship and travails, were evacuated to safety in Switzerland. He himself stayed on trying to broker an even bigger rescue operation.
After the War he was blamed for being elitist, for not saving the masses. Why did he not warn-off everybody else, they accused him, as the trains were rolling off to Auschwitz while he was organizing his wagons in the opposite direction.
What should he have done. They forgot Kasztner had exactly been warning everybody for years, for which he had been ridiculed on no end. In the end, he just focused on making whatever change he was able to make, and he was proven right by the 1’670 people he saved.
Kasztner was an easy scapegoat. He had been an outsider. His maverick successes were living proof the establishment had failed during the War. Under pressure, the local Jewish organizations was overwhelmed and crushed. The leadership in Palestine too pre-occupied with their own survival and too vain to acknowledge out-of-the-box initiatives.
So they hunted Kasztner down and killed him.